Upon considering what Microsoft has released for Xbox, the latter time in the 20 years the platform has stood is questionable about the state of the brand. And while Microsoft is committed to stay with the upcoming Activision Blizzard deal considered to process fully, recent entries from the firm is brought to attention. Whilst the story is regarded as one of Halo’s strongest ever, Halo Infinite did bring a lot of negative response to its live-service approach. It even required a statement from 343 Industries to confirm the IP is not going anywhere.
Additionally, the same can also be clearly said for Arkane Studios’ Redfall. While an ambitious direction the game was heading for the single-player team exploring online fully, the game shipped in a very poor state. Reports revealed that the team during development favored the project being canceled. Even more, Microsoft went ahead to denounce claims of the team’s closure after misfire from the developer then too.
At Gamescom, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer explained that the response of Redfall has been crucial for Xbox and is now led to Microsoft evaluating all of its releases to direct resources from making the same mistakes again.
Well we’re always learning in everything we do – no doubt about that. I would say that – and I’ve shared some of this, but with Redfall it was more of us not using our internal processes that were in place already just because of when integration happened, I’m not using COVID as an excuse, but you know we did close the Zenimax acquisition and then everybody got sent home and it was just not as easy as some earlier companies- studios that we’d acquire in terms of integrating in our process, but that’s all on us.
So I’m not trying to deflect any of the criticism, but absolutely. Anytime we launch anything and we’re going to learn from the launch of Starfield, we’re going to learn from the launch of Forza, and we re-evaluate our process because we want to make sure we’re exceeding customers expectations with everything we do.
And that is potentially already made a large impact on Xbox Game Studios. At least in terms of the sheer scale of releases that is on the way, Starfield could be the catalyst Microsoft needs. This week, it was told by the Xbox firm that Starfield stands as the “starting gun” for what Xbox Game Studios will use when offering a mass lineup of games in its portfolio.
Even more, Spencer during the same interview expressed that the desire to meet the demand of its consumers is manifesting. And rather than annual launches for select titles, the aspiration now we can talk about it as our plan,” he says. You can read the full report by heading here.
What is your thoughts on Spencer’s process moving forward on the state of releases?
